First Edition of Encyclopædia Britannica Published

Context

By the mid-eighteenth century, Edinburgh had emerged as a leading center of the Enlightenment, where philosophers, scientists, and printers pursued the era’s confidence in reason and empirical inquiry. Figures such as David Hume and Adam Smith exemplified the city’s vibrant intellectual life, while rising literacy rates and commercial prosperity created demand for practical reference works among merchants, professionals, and the educated middle class. Earlier continental efforts, notably Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, offered ambitious models but remained costly, foreign-language productions ill-suited to British readers seeking accessible English-language coverage of the arts, sciences, and trades.

What Happened

Printer Colin Macfarquhar and engraver Andrew Bell conceived a new dictionary of arts and sciences that would combine alphabetical entries with longer topical treatises. They engaged twenty-eight-year-old printer and scholar William Smellie to compile and edit the text for a modest fee, tasking him with adapting existing sources into a coherent whole. The work appeared in roughly one hundred weekly sixpenny installments beginning on 6 December 1768; Smellie wrote or adapted nearly every article himself, while Bell supplied the copperplate illustrations. Publication proceeded steadily from Macfarquhar’s shop on Nicolson Street, with subscribers receiving parts that could later be bound into volumes.

Aftermath

The serialized parts proved popular enough to sustain the project through its completion in 1771, when the three quarto volumes—totaling 2,391 pages and 160 engravings—were offered complete for two pounds ten shillings. Sales through subscription lists confirmed a viable market, and the edition was soon reprinted in London with minor variations.

Legacy

The first Britannica established a durable template for English-language encyclopedias, balancing concise definitions with authoritative essays and integrating illustrations directly into the text. Successive editions expanded dramatically in scope and authority, shaping educational practice, scholarly reference, and public discourse for more than two centuries while adapting to successive technologies of print and digital dissemination.